


An Easy Mistake to Make

by clefairytea



Category: Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: Gen, Good Omens AU, Nobody asked for this but I got my galaxy brain on, Snippet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 04:57:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19434400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clefairytea/pseuds/clefairytea
Summary: “We lost the Anti-Christ.”“You, dear,” the Mymble said, adjusting the collar of her coat, “You lost him.”“A child was lost,” the Joxter acknowledged.--In which several characters are not what they seem.





	An Easy Mistake to Make

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen multiple people make Moomin and Snufkin as Aziraphale and Crowley jokes but also...please consider. This fucking galaxy brain take.

“We lost the Anti-Christ.”

“You, dear,” the Mymble said, adjusting the collar of her coat, “You lost him.”

“A child was lost,” the Joxter acknowledged.

In all fairness – nobody should have trusted him with that job. He made a point to be just barely competent enough to be left alive, but not enough to ever be asked to do anything. Tearing up a few signs and encouraging a little chaos now and then was all he was fit for. The rest of his time was spent enjoying lazy naps in the sun, delightful food, slow but fascinating travel, and the company of his dearest not-really-an-enemy-because-who-really-cares-about-the-sides-they’re- _meant_ -to-be-on.

And then very suddenly someone from very far below popped a basket into his hands with a little Moominbaby and told him, well, off you go, make sure to get this done. It had been terribly inconvenient and for once, the Joxter had not been able to slack out of it.

The Mymble sighed, leaning back in the passenger seat.

“Oh dear, eleven years tending to the wrong Moominchild,” she said, as though this were a mild and rather amusing error, rather than something that would get the both of them ripped from existence. Normally the Joxter found the Mymble’s delightful laissez-fair attitude remarkable, but now, with the apocalypse looming and his own fur on the line, even the Joxter was feeling a little on-edge.

They probably should have noticed the past decade or so. The Moominchild has been strange but not… _diabolically_ strange. He simply had odd parents, for Moomins. The Moomin-ambassador and his wife were very much modern trolls. They insisted on living in the city and having jobs and _names_ and even wearing clothes. Young Warlock was unusual, but only in the sense he acted more like a Toffle. And he was evil only in the general way of preteen boys.

In fact, over the past decade of being the boy’s (admittedly, often asleep and frequently inattentive) nanny, the Joxter had not seen him exert one ounce of demonic power. He and the Mymble had discussed it, but always between drinks and always concluding that it would happen sooner or later, and then they would find something much more entertaining to do.

They were both far too easily-distracted for this job, really. Far too fond of earthly pleasures.

He hadn’t really wanted to spend the past decade like this. Of course, time with the Mymble was always fantastic, but he’d gotten quite bored of the 1900s recently. He had planned to take a nice long nap until the new millennium rolled around, when the bosses downstairs and gave him an order that, for all his contrary nature, he had no choice but to obey. And then of course one couldn’t really enjoy oneself properly, knowing the end of everything was a measly decade away.

“Well, it can’t be too difficult to find him,” the Mymble said cheerfully, “I can always manage to find any of my children I want to, no matter what corner of the world they end up.”

“Your children are mortals,” the Joxter pointed out, “This one will be very good at keeping himself concealed to occult beings like us.”

“Hmm, true, true,” she said, “So do you have any ideas?”

One. It probably wasn’t very good.

“There was another Moomin couple there,” he said, “I lit the father’s pipe for him. He said they'd just built a house in Moominvalley.”

“Ooh, I see, then there we have it, I’m sure those two have our lost little Moomin,” she said, and then grabbed the dashboard as the Joxter practically hurled them over a speed-bump, “Oof, darling, are you _sure_ you don’t want me to drive?”

The Joxter shook his head. He didn’t like driving, really. While stealing the car was always fun (especially a Hemulen police car, all locked up tight and practically with ‘Don’t touch!!’ all but written all over it – how was any joxter-shaped demonic entity supposed to resist), the bit afterwards was a bit dull. Yet they didn’t have time to obey traffic laws as the Mymble would feel obliged to.

For once in his life, the Joxter was in a hurry.

“Angel?” he asked, passing something to her out of the glove box, “Put the siren on top, would you?”

After all. The meteor was getting closer by the second.

#

It wasn’t that Moomintroll was the leader of their little group of friends, exactly. They were a very egalitarian bunch, which meant that whoever was in charge was whoever was being the noisiest that day. Which meant usually Little My, sometimes Sniff, very rarely Snufkin. Not that he minded – being in charge of their group sounded like a dreadful chore. He only got passed the buck when everyone else had quite used up all their ideas, but the situation wasn’t quite so dire to go running to Mamma.

No, no, it was more that Moomin had a very particular sort of energy to him. Some people, Snufkin thought reasonably, simply lived exciting lives, where interesting things happened to them. Spending time with Moomintroll ensured one plenty of adventures. In the world outside of Moominvalley, one could never expect to encounter dragons or invisible girls or frost spirits or any of the lovely magical things that had long ago been replaced with concrete and rules and computers. It was reason enough for even a vagabond to stake his claim here, if only for part of the year.

“Well I don’t see why you get to have a birthday party and the rest of us don’t,” Little My said, biting into a pear.

“Well, it’s not your birthday, is it?” Moomintroll replied tartly.

“It might be,” she said, “The rest of us don’t know our birthdays.”

“I do,” Snorkmaiden said, looking up from her romance novel.

“Well la-di-da,” Little My replied, sticking out her tongue. Snorkmaiden sniffed at her before returning to her book.

“I think she’s right! The rest of us should get to have a party and cake and _presents_ today,” Sniff added, getting excited at the thought.

“Oh, go away with you,” Moomintroll said, his patience coming to its end, “It’s my birthday and Mamma is throwing a party for _me_ tonight. The rest of you can ask Mamma to throw you parties another day.”

Little My opened her mouth for a second, but then, strangely, fell silent.

Lately, it had been very difficult to argue with Moomintroll when he put his foot down like that. Perhaps it was simply virtue of him doing it so rarely.

Still, it sometimes made the atmosphere very tense. Snufkin sat up, deciding it best he break it.

“Is someone living in your boathouse this summer?” he asked. Moomintroll looked away from where he was staring down Little My, brightening up.

“Yes, Mamma said she’s just here doing some work on a book. Pappa was excited until he learned she’s not writing it, just doing something with it,” he replied, shrugging in a way that suggested the mechanics of the grown-up world were both beyond him and wholly uninteresting.

“She’s a witch,” Little My said, crunching down on the core.

“Don’t be cruel,” Moomintroll replied.

“Not being cruel, just honest,” she replied, spitting seeds at Sniff, “She is one. Heard the Hemulens talking about it.”

“Oooh, do you think anyone will burn her?” Sniff said, dislodging another apple seed from his skull.

“Maybe we should do it,” Little My said, grinning and standing up, both paws on her hips, “We can play Spanish Inquisition again.”

“I think not!” the Snorkmaiden said. Snufkin privately had to agree. Last time it had been somewhat of a disaster. It had all being going well – the Snorkmaiden revelled in playing the weeping accused witch (she always enjoyed games where she had to be in some sort of peril), and Moomintroll, reading out the Spanish Snufkin had written down for him, did excellent job as the Chief Inquisitor. It surprised everyone, but Moomintroll was always good at playing villains in their games, for some strange reason.

“You’re not still sore about that one, are you?” Little My asked.

Snorkmaiden patted her beloved fringe.

It had been going well. That is, until Little My had tried to use some poor captured Hattifattener as a torture device, and Snorkmaiden’s hair had paid the price. Moominmamma had swept her away for some TLC, and the rest of them had been sternly sent to the veranda for a time-out. Including the Hattifattener.

Little My and Snorkmaiden looked ready to have another argument, and their arguments could last a very long time. But before they could really start, Moomintroll said something again:

“I heard Mrs Fillyjonk’s apple trees are in fruit again right now.”

The rest of them perked up.

“She got rather upset last time,” Snorkmaiden said, even as she put away her book. She only enjoyed playing the grown-up one until it interfered with any fun to be had.

“Ha, rather upset? Hopping mad more like,” Little My said, nudging Snorkmaiden with a smirk, “I heard she doesn’t even call any of us by name any more. She just calls us _them_. Gotta say, it’s better than most of the group names any of _you lot_ have ever cooked up.”

“Ooh, and she said she was going to grow them even better this year,” Sniff said, not listening properly at all now food had been mentioned, “We should sell them! We could make a fortune!”

“I’m only interested in eating them, we don’t need to put poor Mrs Fillyjonk out of house and home,” Moomintroll said reasonably, getting to his feet.

“But it _is_ rather selfish of her to hoard all those apples behind those big awful keep out signs,” Snufkin said, feeling the excitement of a lazy summer morning that was in the process of becoming a very exciting summer day.

“Completely,” Moomintroll agreed, “And no apple isn’t worth the trouble you get in for stealing it.”

There were noises of agreement and excitement, and the group were ready to go to the day’s first adventure. It was an unusual Moomin, in Snufkin’s opinion, that could rally such a rowdy and mis-matched group so easily.

But Snufkin had always known Moomintroll was far from an ordinary Moomin. He just didn’t quite know how correct he was.

So the friends went to ransack Mrs Fillyjonk’s orchard again, delighted to find that security had increased and they would need to tunnel to get in, perhaps even avoid a guard dog or two. So busy were they, digging their first (Snufkin’s second) real tunnel with a can-opener that not one of them noticed that meteor overhead.

And unbeknownst to the children, but extremely knownst to a pair of occult/ethereal beings currently hitting a cyclist with a stolen car, the countdown to the end had begun.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not continuing this I just couldn't stop laughing at the mental image and needed someone else to see it. If artists get to just do a couple of sketches of an idea writers should get to as well.
> 
> Also I really like the scenes from both the Moomins books and the Good Omens book where the kids are all just bickering with each other and wanted to write one.


End file.
